June, 2015

Jeb Bush “is planning to release 33 years of tax returns Tuesday – the most ever by U.S. presidential candidate,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The decision to release more than three decades of financial information comes as Mr. Bush aims to demonstrate he is more transparent and accessible than his opponents, particularly Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. She has filed the financial disclosure form required for presidential candidates but has not made her tax returns public.”

Said Cruz: “Those who are not parties to the suit are not bound by it… The parties to a case cannot ignore a direct judicial order, but it does not mean that those who are not parties to a case are bound by a judicial order.”

“As soon as he makes his presidential announcement tomorrow, Chris Christie will race to New Hampshire for a town hall. The embattled New Jersey governor has little choice: he has to go all-in on the Granite State,” Politico reports.

“Trouble is, he’s not alone. Jeb Bush and Rand Paul are also heavily invested in New Hampshire. So are a handful of GOP long-shots ranging from George Pataki to John Kasich, all of whom will be focusing their campaigns almost entirely on the first-in-the-nation primary state. Never before have so many White House hopefuls bet so much on a single primary.”

The Washington Post reports Chelsea Clinton was paid $65,000 for a speech at the University of Missouri after officials balked at her month’s $275,000 fee.

“More than 500 pages of e-mails, contracts and other internal documents obtained by The Washington Post from the university under Missouri public record laws detail the school’s long courtship of the Clintons. They also show the meticulous efforts by Chelsea Clinton’s image-makers to exert tight control over the visit, ranging from close editing of marketing materials and the introductory remarks of a high school student to limits on the amount of time she spent on campus.”

Sen. Ted Cruz writes in his new memoir A Time for Truth that when he was a young lawyer learning how to argue a case in the Supreme Court, he had a role model: John G. Roberts, whom he described as “a brilliant Supreme Court lawyer,” the “best advocate” of his generation, the Wall Street Journal reports.

“That would be the same John Roberts, now chief justice of the Supreme Court, that Mr. Cruz has been lambasting of late for last week’s ruling upholding a key piece of President Barack Obama’s signature health-care law.”

Meanwhile, Politico reports that Cruz accuses Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in the book of “maneuvering to dry up his fundraising and plant hit pieces in the press aimed at hurting him politically.”

New York Times: “From Ukraine to Uruguay, Moldova to the Philippines, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its foreign affiliates have become the hammer for the tobacco industry, engaging in a worldwide effort to fight antismoking laws of all kinds, according to interviews with government ministers, lobbyists, lawmakers and public health groups in Asia, Europe, Latin America and the United States.”

“The U.S. Chamber’s work in support of the tobacco industry in recent years has emerged as a priority at the same time the industry has faced one of the most serious threats in its history… Facing a wave of new legislation around the world, the tobacco lobby has turned for help to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, with the weight of American business behind it.”

New Orleans Times Picayune: “That’s the slogan on Gov. Bobby Jindal’s first official campaign shirt. And yes, ‘tanned’ is supposed to be a reference to Jindal’s brown skin tone.”

“Jindal used a similar line about being ‘tanned’ in his official presidential campaign launch… National media has seized on Jindal’s relationship with the Indian community, and the Jindal campaign has found some of the coverage and reporting offensive.”

New York Times: “The stunningly quick collapse of support for the Confederate flag has been told largely through the public pronouncements of one governor, Nikki R. Haley of South Carolina, who persuaded the legislature to reconsider the flag’s prominent perch on the capitol grounds. But behind the scenes, powerful forces — capitalism, Christianity, social media, college sports and a Republican Party eager to extricate itself from the past — were converging. Within five days, decades of resistance in South Carolina, a state that had held fiercely to its Confederate identity, fell away.”

“If we don’t try to broaden out the map … we’re going to have to win with an inside straight, to use a Vegas term. Inside straight flush or whatever … I’m not a big gambler so I don’t know any gambling—does that sound stupid when you say that?”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) “is about the best kind of top challenger” that Hillary Clinton “can have: one who focuses on issues that pretty much every primary voter in their party can agree upon, while doing nothing to challenge her character or competence for office,” the National Journal reports.

About Political Wire

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

Praise for Political Wire

"There are a lot of blogs and news sites claiming to understand politics, but only a few actually do. Political Wire is one of them."

-- Chuck Todd, host of "Meet the Press"

"Concise. Relevant. To the point. Political Wire is the first site I check when I’m looking for the latest political nugget. That pretty much says it all."

-- Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report

"Political Wire is one of only four or five sites that I check every day and sometimes several times a day, for the latest political news and developments.”

-- Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report

"The big news, delicious tidbits, pearls of wisdom -- nicely packaged, constantly updated... What political junkie could ask for more?"

-- Larry Sabato, Center for Politics, University of Virginia

"Political Wire is a great, great site."

-- Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC's "Morning Joe"

"Taegan Goddard has a knack for digging out political gems that too often get passed over by the mainstream press, and for delivering the latest electoral developments in a sharp, no frills style that makes his Political Wire an addictive blog habit you don't want to kick."

-- Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post

"Political Wire is one of the absolute must-read sites in the blogosphere."

-- Glenn Reynolds, founder of Instapundit

"I rely on Taegan Goddard's Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It's an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading."